


Moving Out

by dogfighter3000



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bucky Barnes is a good Dad, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:54:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26293720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogfighter3000/pseuds/dogfighter3000
Summary: They say that every end is the beginning of something new, something better, and Bucky Barnes is sure hoping for something new and better when they move out of their comfy DC apartment to a dusty, old house in rural Virginia. What, at first, seems like a promising new adventure, they meet their friendly new neighbor and adopt a stray kitten, soon goes awry when their new home starts revealing a dark and grisly past. Will they come to terms with their house's haunting history, or will they be quick to move out?(A cheesy horror movie fic to be updated every week until Halloween!)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & RJ Boyle, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	1. Moving Day

It was a massive old house. One that sat in front of the woods with its towering brick walls and dusted over windows, almost like a bad omen. It was a colonial style house, set on a couple of acres that was mostly inaccessible due to half of it being in the thicket and laden with thick bramble. It was secluded. Quiet. Remote.

“Wow! They have horses in their backyard!” RJ cheers from behind a mountain of boxes and bags stacked in the backseat of Bucky’s ancient pick-up truck. He was jabbing at the window, pointing at one of the neighboring houses that were so far away that the term neighbor felt wrong. “Do you think they’d let me feed one an apple? Horses love apples, dad, I saw it in a movie once.”

“A movie, huh?” Bucky scoffs as he twists and contorts his body to peer out of the driver’s side window. It would be just his luck to back his beat-up truck into their new house because he can’t see through the back window with all their boxes of shit stacked in the bed. “Well then it must be true, if you saw it in a movie.”

Honestly, Bucky was just relieved his son was finding positives about them packing up and hauling ass out of DC after he was fired from his job a month ago. Most twelve year olds would pitch a fit after having to leave the apartment they’d lived in for their entire lives just to move to the middle-of-nowhere cornfield that made up this part of Isle of Wight County. You’d think a colonial would be a gorgeous old house too, something with a wrap around porch or a fenced-in yard or a barn or something. But this house was all sturdy brick walls and perfunctory windows on both of the two floors. The bare minimum for a decent sized family of farmers back in the fucking 1800s. There was a basement, which was unusual this close to the coast, but that was the only bonus.

Thank God RJ wasn’t a history buff, Bucky wasn’t all that eager to explain the only thing of import about Smithfield, Virginia was the hundred year old ham museum.

“Then I’ll feed the horses whatever it is that horses eat, geez dad,” RJ huffs. Bucky can hear him flop back into his seat and can’t help the smile that comes to his face at the image of his son pouting in the backseat. His attitude is slowly getting worse the closer he gets to being a teenager, but for now he’s still small enough for it to be cute when he tries to act like a mini-adult. “Do you think there’s any kids my age around here?”

Bucky winces thinking of the house they passed with a homemade ‘Bless This Mess’ sign hanging on the door and the old lady sitting on her front door step, literally knitting a blanket like some kind of after school special. “I’m...not sure. I’ll guess we’ll have to do some exploring, huh, kiddo?”

As soon as the truck is backed down the driveway and parked as close as Bucky can get to the front door, RJ is grabbing his backpack and bursting from the car like a caged animal. Which, his father knows, is an exaggeration cause they’d lucked out with the traffic and it only took three hours to get here.

“You better help me carry in these boxes, RJ!” Bucky calls out to his son who’s already sprinting towards the woods behind the house to explore.

“Exercise is good for you!” the little shit yells back before disappearing into the trees. The realtor had mentioned a creek in the woods when they’d been touring the place a couple weeks back and there’d been no peace in the Barnes household since.

“Exercise, my ass! Get back here!” Bucky barks, rolling his eyes at the distant laughter he hears coming from the direction his son had run off in. “How the hell am I going to do this single-handed?”

He doesn’t even spare the empty sleeve of his shirt a glance as he turns his back on the box-laden truck behind him and approaches their new home. It’s not like they need anything out of there, anyways. Bucky and an old friend of his had spent the last week bringing down all the heavy furniture to the house while RJ was in school, just to save money on a moving van.

Pausing before the heavy wooden door, Bucky can’t help but feel like he’s in over his head. There’s no traffic symphony as a backdrop, just deafening silence only interrupted by a stray breeze ruffling the branches of trees every so often. The nearest grocery store is a twenty minute drive away, hell, it’s nearly a two minute drive down a bumpy gravel driveway to get from the road to the house. It’s different. Strange. Almost suffocating. It feels like the house itself is in a pocket carved just past reality, like time passes differently here.

“There’s half a boat back here!” RJ yells, sprinting out of the woods just as quick as he ran into it.

Bucky shakes his head, trying to mentally pull himself out of the weird train of thought he’d been stuck on. The move had him drained and exhausted, he just needs a good night’s sleep on a bed that isn’t a leaky air mattress. 

“Just half?” He chuckles at his son’s antics, letting the boy run up and crash into his left side. It’s enough to knock him out of his staring contest with the spyhole drilled into the door, hard to be stuck in his head with RJ by his side. “Ready to see the new place?”

“Yeah. Did you put my stuff in the cool room? The one with the big windows like we talked about?” RJ questions, unable to contain his excitement as his dad unlocks the front door.

“Yes, yes,” Bucky groans in mock exasperation, hip checking RJ as he uses his remaining hand to try and unlock the deadbolt that tends to stick. “All I ask is that you keep the closet clear in there, okay? The entrance to the attic is up there, and it’s where I’ve been storing all the old stuff the last family left behind.”

“Anything cool?”

“I’ll let you check before I toss anything out, sound good?” Bucky asks, waiting for a nod before grinning down at his son and shoving the door open. “Without further ado…”

RJ bursts through the front entrance to the empty foyer at the front of the house. There wasn’t enough furniture from their two-bedroom apartment in DC to fill the house, making it seem even more large and empty than it already is. The only thing left in the foyer from the previous owners is an ostentatious chandelier dangling from the high ceilings and collecting dust and cobwebs to shine dim light through like the world’s most grim stained glass windows. 

Though, you wouldn’t have been able to tell the house was hollow and boring from the way RJ was buzzing around the front room. The second he ran in, he threw his bag to the side and off he went. It was a mostly open floor plan, meaning when his son ran into the living room, he could loop back through to the foyer by running through the kitchen and dining room. Which he did. Several times.

“It looks like a haunted house!”

Rolling his eyes and chuckling fondly, Bucky sits down on the last step of the staircase, waiting for his kid to lose steam so they can decide what they’re going to do for dinner tonight.

There’s a door beside the bottom of the stairs, hanging slightly ajar and letting up a cold draft. It’s one of several doors that line the walls of the foyer, but Bucky knew this one to be the entrance to the basement. The washer and dryer are down there along with an ancient persian rug covering about a third of the frigid cement floors. He’d only been down there twice, but it was enough to conclude that it was his least favorite part of the house.

Bucky nudges the door shut with the toe of his boot, he swore he’d firmly shut the door last time he was in here. It would just figure if the door had trouble latching and would constantly be swinging open all the time. He’d have to add it to the mile-high list of home improvements he already had to do.

The place was the definition of a fixer upper, it was probably the reason the price was so low. There’s water damage in the basement, the attic is only half-finished, and almost all of the walls downstairs need redone. Someone had done a number on the living room and Bucky was going to have to get real crafty with drywall putty if he didn’t want to be looking at the guts of this house 24/7. Whoever lived here had had some serious issues.

“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?” RJ flops down next to his dad on the stairs, panting after his impromptu sprint. “I can stay at home and help you paint, and stuff.”

“Nice try, booger boy, but you’re not skipping school,” Bucky sighed, reaching over with his right hand to mess up the boy’s short, dark hair. “If it makes you feel any better I can save the painting for this weekend? Have you decided on a color for your room yet?”

“Light blue, and stop calling me booger boy! I’m not a baby anymore,” RJ huffs, knocking into his dad’s side, trying to escape the hand tousling his hair.

“Aw, shucks, but you’ll always be my baby, RJ! Gimme a kiss,” Bucky grins as he pulls his son into a loose headlock to press kisses all over the top of his head, much to his dismay.

“Let me go, you evil old man!” RJ grits out through the giggles spilling out of him as he tries to wiggle away.

“Old?! Oh, you’re in for it now!” Bucky gasps indignantly, curling his hand up at an odd angle to dig his knuckles into RJ’s scalp, making him yelp and squirm down and out of his dad’s grasp. “I’m only thirty, you watch your mouth.”

“You’re ancient. Totally over the hill!” RJ laughs from where he’s sat on the hardwood floor in front of him, using a single sneakered foot to poke at Bucky’s knee through the holes in his jeans.

“I cannot stand this teenage attitude. The disrespect around here,” he mock sighs, folding his arms across his chest. “And here I was about to ask you what you wanted for dinner.”

“I take it back! Can we get McDonalds??” RJ begs after throwing himself across Bucky’s lap, making him laugh.

“I swear, sometimes I don’t know whose kid you are,” Bucky rolls his eyes, standing up and towing his ornery son along with him. “We haven’t been in Virginia since we visited grandma and grandpa over the summer, and you wanna eat boring old McDonalds?”

“I want sprite, though,” RJ argues, following his dad to the front door. “We’re gonna live here, we can explore later. Can we just get McDonalds for tonight, pleeeease?”

It’s been twelve, almost thirteen, years he’s been raising RJ as a single parent. Nearly thirteen years to build up a tolerance to those goddamned puppy dog eyes that HAD to have come from the boy’s mother, because Bucky hadn’t gotten away with nearly as much shit when he was a kid. You’d think he’d be better at resisting by now.

“Only if you help me carry in some boxes first, ok?” Bucky bargains, already succumbing to the fact that he was a spineless fool when it came to his son. 

RJ cheers like he got a resounding ‘yes’ and bolts back outside to the truck, grabbing their overnight bags from the passenger seat and strapping as many as he can over his scrawny shoulders. Bucky shakes his head fondly, and goes to follow his example when a low, drawn-out creaking interrupts him. He turns around apprehensively, praying to God that it’s just the floorboards and not something new that he’ll need to fix.

When he turns around it’s to see the basement door has creeped it’s way open again, not even the slowly dying sunlight that pours into the foyer from the outside is enough to illuminate the dark emanating from down there.

The basement door is put to the top of his mental to-do list as he quickly exits the house to help his son with a particularly heavy duffel bag


	2. Moving In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay technically I didn't post this on Friday like I said I would seeing as it's 2 in the morning on Saturday, but I had to basically rewrite almost all 4k words of this chapter after work today, lmao. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

The term ‘fixer-upper’ was too kind for the first floor of their new house. Bucky was cursing the previous owner as he patched up every last one of the holes that had been drilled, hammered, or punched through the drywall in the living room and hallway. He could only imagine the kind of anger issues the last schmuck who lived here had to have, this was some serious damage. Most of it had been strategically hidden behind the dusty, old furniture left behind, it wasn’t until him and his friend Sam had cleared the living room that he discovered the full extent of the damage. 

It would be a frustrating enough job to spackle the walls with both arms, but with one arm down, it was going agonizingly slow. At least for Bucky’s standards it was. He’d started early this morning after getting his son out to the bus stop this morning, and hadn’t finished until the school day was nearly over. The trickiest bit was trying to patch a gaping hole with a bit of mesh and spackle like he’d seen in a tutorial, all by himself. It certainly wasn’t going to be the prettiest patch job in the world, but maybe he’d take a page out of the previous owner’s book and just push their couch over the worst of it.

Bucky took a step back after filling the last hole, getting a good look at the fruits of his labor. He wouldn’t be on any home improvement shows, that’s for sure, but it was better than staring into the open guts of the house.

The house had seemed too good of a steal at first, but now it was starting to make sense why it hadn’t sold in nearly a decade. At first glance it seemed a lovely little house, a bit far from town, but with all the yard space and the open living areas it could be overlooked. Their tour of the house had been rushed, almost like their realtor would have rather been anywhere but that house, and now he could see why. Now it seemed the longer he stayed in the house, the more problems he found. They’d been told the basement was prone to flooding during the open house, then they’d discovered the holes in the wall after he’d already bought the place and started moving the old furniture out, last night they found that RJ’s room was a good ten degrees colder than the rest of the house, and the stupid door to the basement never fucking latches right. 

It nearly drove Bucky insane all day, he’d be in the middle of a patch with his music cranked high on a portable speaker, just for the loud, whiney creak of the basement door hinges to squeal over top of his favorite guitar riffs. Eventually he’d shoved a pair of shoes in front of the door to keep it from opening anymore and hadn’t been bothered by it since.

At least the walls could be taken off his mental to-do list, Barnes thought to himself, smug with the work he’d gotten done today.

He turns his music off and gathers the tools he used today and dumps them into the sink with a loud clatter that reverberates through the empty kitchen and out into the foyer. Bucky wonders how long it will take RJ to get home after school as he turns the water on. It’s quiet in the house without his son there.

Rolling up his sleeve by shimmying it up using his hip, he gets to work trying to scrape the drying plaster off his spatula.

The water turns a murky white as it slowly rinses away the spackle residue, the hole in the sink chugging lazily, struggling to empty the basin of the dirty water. It’s a couple inches deep by the time Bucky realizes that the drain’s probably clogged. 

“Great,” He groans, shutting off the tap and tossing the half-cleaned spatula onto the counter. “Another fucking thing for me to fix in this hell house.”

After taking a brief second to dry his hand off on his jeans, he locates the switch for the garbage disposal and flicks it. A terrible sound like a car crash fills the room, the sound of blades tearing into something equally as harsh and metallic. He flinches, fumbling for the switch again.

The disposal had only been on for two seconds at most, but the jarring noise had left the rest of the house almost eerily silent in response. Bucky was acutely aware of how loud the sound of his own breathing was as he stared at the murky water in the sink, watching as it lazily bubbled down the clogged drain.

Ugh, God. He was going to have to reach down there and grab the clog himself, wasn’t he?

It would be different if it had just been the spackle gunk jamming it up or even if it had been some ancient food stuck down there, but the disposal would have torn through those. Assuming it’s a piece of silverware from the harsh metal sound, it should have shot up when he hit the disposal. Just his luck if there was an old spoon or someshit stuck in the grinding chamber of the disposal.

“New beginnings, ma said...this will be a good experience for you, ma says,” Bucky grumbles, waiting out the last dredges of plaster water to disappear and picking at the remaining spackle with his fingernail. “Bullshit, ma. You just wanted to spoil my son more often, now look where I am.”

Where he IS is less than ideal. Reluctant didn’t even begin to explain how little he wanted to shove his only remaining hand down an ancient garbage disposal and pull out some decade old hunk of junk. Maybe he was being a little dramatic, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of dread crawling up his spine and between his shoulder blades to sit like a weight in his chest.

Just how many horror movies started like this? Our unsuspecting victim doing the dishes home alone, the sink is clogged and this poor idiot just HAS to stick his arm in and root around just long enough for the disposal to mysteriously turn on and turn his hand into raw hamburger meat. That would be just his luck.

Reluctantly, Bucky leans over the edge of the now empty sink, trying to peer into the drain and hazard a guess as to what might really be stuck down there. A futile effort, seeing as it’s pitch black all the way down. There really is no way around this. With a deep breath, he takes the plunge, slipping his right hand down into the drain. It’s a tight squeeze, but he makes it just past halfway on his forearm before he hits the disposal.

The house is silent beyond the sound of his heart beat thundering in his ears. His breathing picks up without his knowing as he probes around the grinding chamber for what made that terrible noise earlier. Bucky nearly yelps when the tips of his fingers brush up against what feels like the ball chain to a necklace caught between the blades of the disposal.

He wants to sigh heavily because, really, of all things to be caught in the fucking sink, a necklace? But then he ends up making a choked off grunt sort of sound when he gives the chain a gentle tug and the blades start to move, a low grinding noise coming from the very drain he was elbow deep in right now. In shock, he drops the chain again, trying to catch his breath and get the image of shredded, bloody fingers out of his head.

As slowly and as carefully as he can manage, he reaches back down and wraps the chain around his fingers. Bucky’s sweating now, but he feels ice cold and clammy. Over the sound of his harsh breathing and the dizzying sound of his blood rushing through his ears, he’s almost convinced he can hear the basement door creaking open again. 

He’s planning to tear the necklace from the drain as quickly as he can, hoping he can avoid the blades if he does so. With a deep breath he starts to count down from three, planning to tug on one.

“Three...two...on-”

RUFF!!!

Bucky drops the chain like it burnt him, head whipping around towards the front of the house where the noise had come from. Was that a fuckign dog? Before he can decide whether to give the necklace another try or not, there’s another deep bark from right outside the front door.

With a groan, he removes his arm from the drain and shakes off the water clinging to his skin. Bucky half jogs through the living room to the foyer and is met with a giant St. Bernard slobbering against the storm door to his house. The beast of a dog barks excitedly upon spotting him, hopping up to its hindlegs to rest both massive front paws on the glass. Through the glass he can see a red leather collar peeking out from underneath shaggy, white fur, but before he can read the inscription on the tags, the dog falls back to all fours.

“Where did you come from, huh, pal?” Bucky mutters, carefully opening his door open just enough to squeeze through. No way in hell is he adding ‘clean up dog hair’ to his mental to-do list. A brief look out at his front yard shows there’s no owner coming after their dog. It’s creepier than it should be, how he can look out in broad daylight and can’t find a single soul as far as the horizon stretches. You never got privacy like this in the city.

He kneels on the sidewalk in front of his house, trying to check the tags dangling from his collar. Which wasn’t an easy task with the world’s friendliest dog trying to climb into his lap and lick up the side of his face. Thank his lucky stars that he’d had the forethought to tie his shoulder-length hair up this morning. Washing dog drool out of his overgrown fringe was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

“Where’s your owner...Chester?” Bucky asks, flipping the tags around to try and find an address or a phone number or literally any information at all besides the dog’s name. “No address. Aww, looks like your owner’s a dumbass. Isn’t that right, big boy? Just a big ol’ dumbass?” He scratches under Chester’s chin as he baby talks the big brute trying to wriggle his way into his lap.

“Can’t say I disagree with you there,” A deep voice chuckles from around the corner of the house, making Bucky jolt upright. He would’ve landed flat on his face if it wasn’t for the near two hundred pounds of St. Bernard strewn across his lap, the dog’s huge head resting on his bad shoulder.

Approaching from the direction of the woods was an absolute mountain of a man, the guy had shoulders for days and Bucky nearly did a double take. He was dressed up in what looked like lounge clothes, sweatpants and a well-loved shirt that stretched across his pecs in a way that Bucky was having an admittedly hard time looking away from. When he’d finally tore his eyes away from the dude’s chest, he found that the man was looking down at him with an amused smile, one brow quirked higher than the other in a questioning gaze. 

Figures he’d find the only hot blonde in the county and then insult him directly to his dog.

“Shit, I didn’t mean - I just. His tags, I- wow. I’m sorry,” Bucky was struggling not to bury his face into Chester’s face out of sheer embarrassment. “I swear I’m usually a lot more well spoken than this. You’ve caught me on an off day.”

“Nah, It’s alright. You make a good point, I’ve been meaning to update his tags for a while now. This was just the push I needed,” The blonde shrugs, still grinning down with that sunshine smile while Bucky sits with his ass to the concrete like a dumbass. Not by choice, at least, Chester was both heavy as hell and content where he was pressed to Bucky’s torso. “I’m Steve, you just move here?” Steve asks, politely extending his left hand out towards him.

Bucky sits and stares at the hand in his face. The LEFT hand in his face. It’s clear Steve wants to shake his hand, but, for very obvious reasons, Bucky can’t do that. At least not with his left hand, anyways.

“James Barnes, but you can call me Bucky. Just moved here last night,” Bucky responds, trying to ignore the hand still directly in front of him and the way it was starting to droop in hesitance. Not able to stand the almost kicked-puppy look on Steve’s face as his hand slowly settled back at his side, Barnes wriggled out from under Chester, and pointedly waves what’s left of his left arm at the blonde. He so desperately wishes he brought his phone out to get a picture of the look that crossed Steve’s face when he realizes what happened.

In fact, the guy looks so embarrassed that Bucky’s kind of glad he hadn’t given into the urge to try and shake Steve’s hand with the stump of his left arm. Probably wouldn’t have been as funny in real life as it was in his head.

“Oh my God, I didn’t - Chester was blocking you...I really am a dumbass. This is…” Steve struggles for a few more seconds before he gives up, using one surprisingly large hand to cover his face which is becoming more flushed by the second. “Foot meet mouth. Wow, we’re both God awful at first impressions, huh?”

“Help me out from underneath your monster dog and we can start over?” Bucky teases, holding out his right hand for Steve to grab onto, which he does almost immediately while whistling at Chester to make him get up. 

“Bucky, was it?” Steve clarifies, still loosely holding Bucky’s hand after easily tugging him upright. Not that the Bucky’s gonna complain because he is by no means a small man and it's a little exhilarating to have been pulled around like that. “Not a name you hear too often. I’m Steve, and I’m totally not going to be an asshole and try to shake your hand.”

“It’s short for Buchanon, my middle name,” Bucky smirks, cocking his head to the side as he stares up into bright, blue eyes that he could get lost in, not cliche intended. “Nice to meet you, Steve. I’m totally not going to call you a dumbass to your dog.”

Steve laughs out loud, hand coming up to hold his chest, and Bucky definitely didn’t mourn the loss of his hand wrapped around his, no sir. Maybe he needed to get out more, this was sad.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” Bucky chuckles, unable to look away from where Steve’s grinning down at him. “You live ‘round here?”

“The house to your right. I usually let Chester run around in the front yard but today he bolted straight into the woods and ended up by your place. Sorry about that,” Steve jerks a thumb towards the house about a ten minute walk in the distance, the one with a tiny vintage car parked into the driveway. Bucky had figured there was just another little, old man living over there, anything but the fucking Adonis before him. “You know, I’m kinda surprised a guy like you moved into a place like this.”

“Oh, a guy like me, huh?” Bucky grinned salaciously, right hand sliding out of his pocket to rest on his hip. “An’ just what’s that supposed to mean?”

Steve cocked his head to the side, a crooked smirk on his face as he shrugged. “Just not a lot of handsome guys like you, I mean, moving into this neighborhood. Especially not in this house anyways, it’s been empty for almost ten years now.”

“Uh-huh, sure thing casanova. Is that why the price was way down low? I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how a house this big was so cheap,” Bucky jots down a mental note to investigate what he could swear was flirting down for later. As much as he’d like to find out where that kind of thing might lead, he’s still kind of curious about his new place. He figures the people who live around the neighborhood will probably give him more information than the lady who’d been trying to sell him the joint did.

“Well, yeah. I guess that’s one of the reasons…” Steve trails of sheepishly, shuffling nervously as he glances at the house looming ominously over them like it would swallow them whole.

“And the other reasons?”

“It’s nothing, really,” Steve shrugs and waves his hand, answering way too quickly. He’d known the guy for five minutes and Bucky could already tell Steve was a piss poor liar. “Just rumours. It’s a small town, the people like making up stories, all gossip.”

“Aw, Steve, don’t tell me you think the house is haunted!” Bucky smiled crookedly, shaking his head. 

“I didn’t say it was haunted!” It was Bucky’s new mission in life to see how many times he could fluster Steve in a single conversation. “I’m just saying the townsfolk like to ramble on about weird things happening in the place is all. After living next to the place for a long time, I’m not sure it’s-”

“Dad! Dad! There’s a kitten caught in the fence by my bus stop!” RJ was sprinting down the gravel driveway towards the house, backpack stuffed to the brim and bouncing along behind him. “She’s crying something awful, we gotta go help her!”

“Hey, kiddo. Sorry, Steve, this is my son RJ. What were you going to say?”

“Son??”

“Daaaad! We have to go now what if she gets hurt and - ooh, is that a doggy??” RJ crashed into Bucky’s left side, nearly bowling him over in the process. Bucky ruffled the boy's short hair, pushing it off his forehead. He might as well have been invisible for how quickly RJ got down on his knees to greet the happily barking dog who looked even more massive in comparison to the twelve year old.

“RJ, this is one of our new neighbors, Steve, and his dog Chester,” Bucky rolls his eyes as he reaches over to flick the side of RJ’s head. 

“Hi, Mr. Steve, can I pet your dog?” RJ asks, keeping his hands politely at his sides even while Chester prances happily in front of him and licks up the side of his face.

Steve nods stiffly, smiling politely at the kid before turning back to Bucky. “I didn’t know you had a kid.”

“Uh, well, I do,” Bucky raises an eyebrow at the suddenly tense blonde at his side. The guy had totally frozen up when RJ ran up and was doing a decent job at hiding it, but the stressed wrinkle between his brows was a clear giveaway. It was as thought a switch had been flipped, the easy, near flirtatious, air between them suddenly gone stagnant and dead. “Is that an issue?”

“I - what? Issue? No, I - I have to get going,” Steve chokes over his words before finally shaking his head and taking a couple of stiff steps backwards. He gestures uselessly over his shoulder towards his house. “It was really lovely getting to meet you two. See you around.”

RJ gave the big dog a quick hug before letting him trot over to his owner’s side, and Bucky watched the two hastily retreat until they were small in the distance and well out of earshot. That was weird, even for isolated country folks from Virginia. Steve probably had commitment issues or something, which didn't surprise him. Nobody that good-looking comes without their flaws. It was a shame too, they seemed to get along just fine before his son showed up. Which, whatever, he was a single father, he didn’t have time for people who couldn’t be there for his kid.

“Sorry I made your friend go away,” RJ apologizes as he climbs back to his feet and dusts off his jeans.

“It’s not your fault, goob,” Bucky immediately changes the subject, not wanting his son to think for a second that any of this was his fault. Luckily he could get away with blaming a lot of shit on weird grown-up rules that a twelve year old wouldn’t think to question. It wouldn’t do either of them any good if Bucky continued to sit and mope about lost opportunities with their apparently smoking hot neighbor. “Now what were you saying about a kitten stuck in the fence?”

“Oh my god, yeah!” RJ cried out, clutching his father’s hand and tugging him up the sidewalk towards their front door that was now sporting some trendy new slobber marks. Thanks, Chester. “I heard her crying when I got off the bus, so I checked it out an’ she doesn’t even have a collar! We gotta bring her home!”

“You know the rule about pets, RJ,” Bucky groans, planting his feet into the hardwood so RJ couldn’t drag him any further into the foyer. They went through the exact conversation every time they found a puppy for sale or a stray cat or, on one memorable occasion, an overly friendly, one-eyed pigeon they found while visiting Bucky’s old friends in New York.

“Dad, c’mon! You said it was because the old apartment didn’t allow pets, but now we got our own house!” RJ argues, digging through a cardboard box labelled ‘workshop’ that was too heavy for Bucky to carry into the basement by himself. “Do we have wire cutters?”

Bucky was having a hard time trying to find a counter argument to that. It was hard to put on a tough face, especially when this is the most excited he’s seen RJ in months. The boy paused his rummaging to look up at his dad, eyes big and shiny with the hopeful look he had on his face. 

That was it. How could Bucky say anything other than, “We’ll see.” Which they both knew was as good as a yes in his book. 

Rolling his eyes, Bucky dug the wire cutters from the inside of his toolbox and let RJ snatch them up, bolting back outside with a loud cheer. Man, was he a sucker for those puppy dog eyes.

Before following RJ out of the house, Bucky took a moment to close the basement door, yet again. He glanced uneasily at the heavy rubber-soled sneakers he had set in front of the door and how they had been easily pushed aside to let the door open.

He added fixing the latch on the basement door to his mental to-do list, then followed his son outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also I didn't mention this last chapter but if y'all are curious who RJ is, check out the Winter Soldier (2018) comics. They're so cute and it's canon that Bucky saw RJ as a son, literally one of my favorite comics ever even if the ending's a bit sad.


	3. Moving Around

By the time they’d found the only pet supply store open within thirty miles of their house and then grabbed dinner from the Thai place nearby, it was nearly pitch black outside. The days kept ending faster and faster the further they got into fall, leaving Bucky disoriented at how little time he really has to get things together.

But it wasn’t like he could skip the pet store tonight. Not after RJ conned him into bringing that damn cat back to their house.

RJ had half-dragged his father down the gravel road that winded through their small neighborhood towards the main road where his bus stop was. They both walked straight into the yard of a condemned house with busted out windows and jungle grass crowding the yard and weaving its way through the chain links of a rusty, gnarled fence surrounding the property. It wasn’t difficult to find the dusty white kitten, not with the way it was crying out pitifully as it tried to wiggle its bottom half out from under the bottom of the fence. 

Both of them had squatted down in front of the fence, Bucky trying to assess the situation while RJ cooed at the small kitten, patting her tiny little head soothingly. The poor thing was scrabbling at the dirt with a single muddy paw, unable to drag herself out from under the fence like she would have been able to, had she had two front legs. 

“Oh wow! One arm!” RJ gasped, laying it on a little too thick. “What a coincidence! D’you think it’s fate, dad?”

“Uh-huh, sure,” Bucky rolled his eyes as he tugged the bottom of the gnarled fence up so his son could gently scoop the kitten out from underneath and cradle her to his chest. The tiny animal quieted almost instantly, staring up at Bucky with wide, blue eyes.

“Dad, we HAVE to keep her,” RJ whined, turning his own sad, brown eyes to Bucky. How could he even THINK with the both of them staring up at him like that?

Bucky glanced away, unsure of what to say to his son, and that was all it took for RJ’s bottom lip to start wobbling a little too realistically for puppy-dog eyes. The poor kid had to be exhausted after today. Yesterday they had said goodbye to the only home RJ had ever known, he’d had to leave his childhood friends, his hometown. Then today he’d had his first day in a new school, a new MIDDLE SCHOOL, as if being new wasn’t bad enough on it’s own. These last three months had been hard, and RJ had been steady through it all. Through his dad losing an arm, through his dad losing his job, through them moving them the next state over, all of it, and he’d hardly asked for anything.

So, really, what else could Bucky do besides smile softly and ask, “Got any good name ideas?”

It had been the right decision, if not for the way RJ’s face completely lit up upon seeing the kitten waiting at the door when he came home from school, then for the adorable, shrill mews that came from the large cardboard box he’d placed her in when he was repainting the living room that morning.

The newly named ‘Winter’ is absolutely darling. She’s a bit wobbly from the combination of her kitten clumsiness and the missing leg, but it doesn’t stop her from wildly attacking the feather toy RJ drags across the kitchen floor while Bucky cooks dinner Thursday night.

“Can I bring Winter into my room tonight?” RJ asks through his giggling over the way the kitten hops up on her hindlegs to swat at her toy.

“Sure, but you know you can’t let her sleep in your bed, right?” Bucky hums as he drains the spaghetti noodles, the boiling pasta water pouring straight down the sink drain with ease. RJ groans loudly and as drawn out as he can manage. “Don’t give me any of that, boy. Your bed’s too high off the ground for her, she’d be stuck.”

“Not if I wake up and just put her on the ground,” RJ pouts as Winter gives up on the feathers and takes to attacking his hand, tiny kitten teeth gnawing at his index finger. 

“Okay, sure,” Bucky shrugs causally. “And when she pees in your bed?”

“FINE! You win, you greedy cat hog,” RJ huffs, rolling onto his back and letting Winter claw her way up to sit on top of his chest.

Bucky snorts and rolls his eyes. “She’s all yours when she’s big enough to climb all the furniture. Dinner’s ready, grab some plates outta the kitchen box,” He instructs, pointing to the stack of cardboard boxes lining the dining room wall. 

RJ did as he was told, Winter nipping at his heels as he crossed the kitchen towards the open box of dishes they’d been grabbing things out of the last few days. 

“Ugh, dad, they’re all gross and dusty,” RJ’s nose wrinkled in disgust as he grabbed two plates and brought them back to his father who was turning the burner off.

“Alright, princess, lemme rinse em off for you,” Bucky teased, although the plates were pretty dusty. They’d been using paper plates for the last three weeks while they were getting ready for the move, so these were well overdue for a good wash. “Go get Winter food while I do that?”

With a quick nod, RJ ran to the pantry where they kept the cans of wet food, the kitten still following him like a shadow. Bucky set the plates at the bottom of the sink, staring at the drain as if daring it to start something today. The pasta water had gone down without a hitch, but he hadn’t made a second attempt at the necklace he’d found in the drain since Monday afternoon. Before he could work himself up about it, he turned the water on, holding up the first plate to rinse the dust off of it. 

He managed to rinse and scrub both plates without any problems, the tap water gurgling down with ease. Like there’d never been a problem to begin with. Bucky rolled his eyes, setting the dishes on a hand towel.

“This stuff smells gross,” RJ laughs from where he’s watching Winter devour the can-shaped lump of fancy feast out of a food bowl.

“I dare you to eat some,” Bucky grins, drying off the dishes with the folded-up edge of the towel.

“What!?” RJ exclaims, making Winter mewl grumpily in protest of her interrupted meal. The preteen reaches down to pat her head. “No way, if I did that my breath might smell as bad as yours!”

“Excuse you??” Bucky barked out a surprised laugh, whipping around to glare at his little shit son. “That’s it. Find something else to eat for dinner, spaghetti’s just for me.”

“I take it back! I take it back!!”

-

The last four days had been filled with work. It was an old house, way older than Bucky, maybe even older than his parents. He knew that when he signed for the mortgage, knew that it would take a bit of work to get it in decent shape. In all honesty, the place was in better condition than it could’ve been for a house that’d been all but abandoned for the last ten years, but it was still a lot of work for just one man. One man with one arm.

And maybe that had been Bucky’s fault, still thinking like everything was normal, that he could handle all these things on his own. It was easy to forget while sitting at the dinner table with RJ, laughing and eating when his son asks him to pass him a napkin and reaching out for it with a left arm that wasn’t there.

It was a constant battle. Filling the holes in the wall took three times as long as it should have. The boxes took forever to be emptied because he couldn’t lift them on his own. For fuck’s sake, he couldn’t even hold a dish up and wash it at the same time. Thanks to whoever installed a dishwasher in this hell house, or they’d be drowning in dirty dishes.

But it was fine, Bucky was coping, or he would learn to. 

Regardless of how well he was really keeping it together, Bucky was dead tired. Every night since they moved in he’d barely stayed awake through his shower and fell straight into bed after checking that Winter had a bowl of water and a clean litter box.

Tonight was no exception.

So, imagine, how aggravating it was to wake up at just half past midnight to the sound of scratching against his closet door.

Bucky groans, thinking of a million curse words to describe just how pleased he is to be awake in the middle of the night, and buries his face into his pillow. His plan of waiting for the scratching to stop proved pointless, as every time the scratching dies off it starts back up just as he begins to fall asleep.

“Winter, please stop,” Bucky grumbles after the third round of ear grating scritching against wood. The sound stops immediately. With a content sigh, he snuggles back down into his bed, trying to get comfy. Exhaustion filled every weary bone in his body, it wasn’t hard to close his eyes and slowly start drifting off, warm and cozy and-

_ scritchscritchscritch _

“God fucking dammit!” He grumbles, kicking off his sheets and stumbling out of bed. “It’s ass o’clock Friday morning, cat,  _ please  _ give it a rest.” Assuming Winter accidentally shut herself in the closet while he slept, he tears the door open, the scratching dying off abruptly.

It’s dark inside the closet, the dim moonlight streaming in through the window blocked by the shadow of the open door. Bucky doesn’t see Winter lurking underneath the cuffs of the jeans hanging from the rack, but he does hear a shrill mew from under his bed.

Turning around, it’s easy to spot the shock white cat curled into a tight ball between the head of his bed and his night stand.

“How did you…?” Bucky glances at the closet, empty besides his clothes, then back to the wide-eyed cat staring just past him. “What-the-fuck-ever.”

He leaves the door open and falls face first into his bed, promising that he’ll set some rat traps in his closet when the sun’s out. 

The warm feeling of being half asleep is gone though, his room’s cold and no matter how much wriggling he does under the blankets, he can’t seem to chase away the chill. From his bed, the yawning mouth of his closet is even more pitch black. Bucky tries closing his eyes tight against it, but can’t get rid of the feeling of being watched.

It’s like that for hours, restless tossing and turning where every creak and groan from the old house brings him back to wakefulness. Then it’s six in the morning and he can hear RJ getting ready for school down the hall.

Groaning, he drags himself out of bed, pulling his bedroom door open and watching as Winter sprints out of his room as fast as her three legs can carry her.

If he can’t sleep he might as well get started on breakfast.

-

Bucky groans dramatically from where he’s strewn across the living room couch. All he managed to get done today was emptying the boxes in the dining room, meaning the kitchen was fully equipped and standing by for a masterpiece to be created within. That is, if Bucky wasn’t dog-tired after a night of shit sleep and a week of busting his ass cleaning this place up. Looks like the pots and pans could wait another night, takeout sounds good right about now.

“RJ! Where you at?” Bucky called out, voice echoing through the hall and empty foyer.

RJ had just gotten home from school and had asked if they could watch Jurassic World for what was probably the 5th time this month. When Bucky agreed, the boy practically sprinted up the stairs to get the DVD out of his laptop. That’d been nearly ten minutes ago and now he was starting to wonder if the kid had gotten lost.

“My room!” RJ calls back, voice tiny from upstairs.

Bucky heaves himself off the couch with a loud grunt, instantly missing the warmth from where he’d wedged himself into the seam of the couch. It’s worth it for pizza, he tells himself as he shuffles up the stairs to where he can hear giggling from RJ’s room. Curious, he pauses before entering his son’s bedroom, leaning against the door frame.

RJ is sitting on the floor rolling a small jingly cat toy underneath his bed, still quietly laughing.

“You good, goob?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow at his patiently waiting son.

“No, no, look!” RJ shushes his dad while waving a hand at him, not taking his eyes away from the shadows under his bed. They wait in silence for another ten seconds before the cat toy rolls right back out and bumps into RJ’s legs. “Winter and I are playing ball!”

“Uh-huh, I see,’ Bucky snorts, watching as RJ bats the jingly, little ball right back under the bed. “You made any friends at school yet?”

RJ’s smile falls off his face, replaced with a look of teenage exasperation that takes Bucky by surprise. 

“Dad, I’m fine. Can’t I just be excited about my first pet for five minutes?” He rolls his eyes and catches the sparkly toy when it lazily rolls back out from under the bed. Taken aback by the abrupt change in attitude from his son, Bucky changes tactics.

“I just came up to ask if you wanted to get pizza for dinner tonight,” Bucky asks gently. RJ continues to hit the cat toy back and catch it when it rolls back. “It’s the only place that delivers this far out into the country.”

“That’s fine, dad,” RJ responds, refusing to look at his dad, eyes trained on the ball going back and forth between him and the bed.

“I’ll get our usual,” Bucky nods, not sure how to act when his son gets like this. It’s all new, and he has no way of telling if it’s the usual teenage angst or all the change in his life as of late. Either way, Bucky misses his sweet boy and feels like an asshole for making him upset in the first place. “We still watching Jurassic World?”

“Yeah, I’ll be down in a second.”

That’s definitely his cue to leave. Bucky nods, sparing one last glance at the cat toy speeding out from the shadows of the bed, then heads back downstairs.

He is wholly unprepared to deal with teenage angst, especially not on his own. Objectively, he knows he’s honestly lucky he’s gone as long as he has without a meltdown, but most days it feels like a guessing game whether or not he’ll say something to upset his son. As RJ’s only parent, he’s supposed to have all the answers, but Bucky’s making this up as he goes along, with only the odd bit of unhelpful advice from his own parents. (He loves his parents, don’t get him wrong, but they made PLENTY of mistakes of their own that Bucky isn’t keen on repeating. Breaking the cycle and all.)

Bucky rubs his right temple tiredly, trying to push back the growing ache building behind his eyes. He flops back onto the couch, nearly jumping right back up when Winter scrambles out from underneath it.

“Jesus, fuck, Winter!” Bucky wheezes, grasping at his chest like that might stop his heart from racing. “Winter? Weren’t you ju-”

“I got the movie, did you order the pizza yet?” RJ asks as he comes down the stairs. 

Bucky glances from his son back to where Winter had bolted into the kitchen and out of sight. She must have come downstairs after him and he was too stuck in his own head to realize. God, he could use a nap right about now.

“No, not yet. You want something different than pepperoni?” Bucky stands back up from the couch as RJ turns the DVD player on.

“Can we get supreme this time? I got pepperoni pizza at lunch today.”

“Sure thing, booger boy. Lemme go call the place.”

By the time he’s dug through the honestly impressive stack of takeout menus they’ve accumulated through the week and orders a large supreme pizza, the once sunny afternoon is slowly clouding over. Thunder rumbles ominously overhead and the fat grey clouds above look fit to burst any second. Bucky’s starting to feel bad about ordering delivery when there’s a storm brewing, but before he can bend himself out of shape, RJ’s calling him into the living room. The movie’s started.

The pizza’s alright, the movie is good, RJ’s mood gets better. The evening isn’t a total bust despite that ten minutes after they settle in with their dinner it starts pouring buckets outside. It’s almost eight by the time they finish the movie and RJ groans and complains enough to convince his dad to watch the second movie, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Then it’s pushing ten when the credits roll and Bucky has been half asleep for over an hour.

“Agh! These movies never get old!” RJ gushes, bouncing on the couch in excitement. Much too lively for this time of night, if you ask Bucky. “I can’t wait for the third Jurassic World movie, how ‘bout you dad? Dad??”

Instead of responding, Bucky closes his eyes and flops over onto his son, pushing him into the arm of the couch with a loud, fake snore. 

“Nooo! You’re crushing me!!” RJ yelps, smacking at his dad’s shoulder and trying to squirm out from underneath him where he continues to snore in his ear. “Winter! Save me!”

Winter gives an unimpressed mew from where she’s curled up in the recliner.

“Your knight in shining armor, huh, kid?” Bucky grins, watching as the kitten yawns and buries her head into her front paws.

“She’s a ferocious beast, actually,” RJ rolls his eyes. “Show some respect, dad.”

With a snort, Bucky stops smothering his son and groans dramatically as he stands up from the couch, his knees cracking loudly enough to catch RJ’s attention.

“Not a word from the peanut gallery.”

“Getting pretty old, huh, dad?”

“What did I literally just say?” Bucky scoffed, swatting at RJ’s shoulder and making the boy giggle as he ducked out of reach. The boy slides from the couch and scoops up Winter from the armchair.

“I wasn’t sure if you could hear me, old man,” RJ is wisely backing away from his dad, walking backwards out of the living room.

“Oh, wowww,” It was a struggle not to laugh at his son’s antics and feign annoyance. “Y’know what? Just for that you can deal with Winter tonight. Have her scratching at your closet door all night instead of mine.”

“Yes!!” RJ cheered, making Winter growl in protest from his arms. “We can have a boy’s night, Winter. Just me and you.”

“Winter’s a girl, goob.”

“She’s one of the boys, don’t be rude,” RJ rolls his eyes like it’s obvious before running back into the living room to give his dad a quick hug. “Thanks, dad. Goodnight!”

“Night, booger boy,” Bucky grunts back, barely getting the chance to pat his son on the back before he’s bolted out of the living room and up the stairs towards his own. This arrangement will probably benefit everyone and maybe Bucky will actually be able to get some sleep tonight.

Vowing to shower in the morning, he falls into bed and hopes he’ll fall asleep quickly.

-

“Dad, don’t get mad at me but I think the washing machine is broken,” RJ says meekly from where he’s peeking in through Bucky’s cracked bedroom door.

“Broken how?” Bucky rasps, trying to unwrap stiff limbs from the sheets he’s tangled in. A glance at his alarm clock shows it’s only a couple minutes past eight, meaning he got a grand total of three and a half hours of sleep last night. His spine pops loudly when he straightens up and three other joints crack when he stumbles out of bed, making RJ wince.

“You sound like a bowl of rice krispies,” RJ ducks under the glare his father sends him at that comment. “And I don’t know, when I try to run the machine it just beeps at me. I’m sorry for waking you up, I thought I could do it myself.”

“I’m not mad at your RJ. I just didn’t get much sleep last night, is all. Don’t mind me being a grumpy, old man,” Bucky rubs his son’s back comfortingly, waiting for a small smile before gesturing towards the stairs. “Now let’s go see what the problem is.”

Bucky follows his son down the stairs and into the foyer and then into the basement. The door to which was swung wide open without the box of books he’d put in front of it after the garbage disposal incident on Monday. Outside the sun is shining bright, warming the house, it’s shaping up to be a beautiful day. None of it touches the basement, which practically radiates a chill the second you step out onto the staircase.

Before buying the house, the realtor had warned there had been some water damage in the basement and that it was prone to flooding. At the time, Bucky hadn’t thought twice about it. They were on the coast, of course there would be mild flooding, he’d deal with it as it comes. What he didn’t expect was that he’d have to deal with it so soon.

As soon as he finishes descending into the basement, the problem is immediately visible in the form of a murky puddle, slowly spreading out from underneath the washing machine.

“I thought you said it just wasn’t starting?” Bucky murmurs, kneeling down next to the machine, trying to see where the water was coming from.

“There wasn’t any puddle when I was down here!” RJ insists, shifting nervously. “There wasn’t any - maybe it...I probably just didn’t see it, it’s dark down here.”

It was dark. The only lighting they had to work with down there was a single light bulb and a worn pull string in the center of the small room. Come to think of it, this was more a cellar than a basement, what with how small it was compared to how big the ground floor was. Brushing the thought aside, Bucky gets down lower beside the washer and tries to peer into the gap between the wall and the machine. 

“I think the leak’s coming from the back,” Bucky mumbles before glancing up to his son who’s still anxiously standing towards the bottom of the stairs. “Grab me a flashlight?”

RJ bolts up the stairs before Bucky’s even finished asking and Bucky would laugh if he didn’t want to be down here either. His knees were already chilled from where the bitter cold of the concrete floor had seeped through his pajama pants. He stood back up, giving the washing machine another onceover before deciding he’d try and wiggle the washer away from the wall. 

Figuring the best way to handle this is by pushing with the washer with his left hip and brace against the wall with his right hand, he wiggles his left foot in between the machine and the concrete wall behind it. Bucky grimaces as his foot lands right in the middle of the sludgey puddle that’s slowly inching its way across the basement floor.

“What is this shit?” Bucky hisses to himself as he manages to push the washer far enough away that he can immediately see the problem.

There was an outlet hidden by the washing machine along with a decades worth of spider webs and dust bunnies. Most alarming is the viscous grey slime leaking out from the bottom socket of the outlet, oozing out and down the stained concrete wall into a disgusting puddle that Bucky still has his foot in.

“Are you fucking kididng me?!” Bucky groans, trying to shake what wall sludge he can off of his foot. “First the fucking holes in the wall, then the stupid garbage disposal, and now this fucking basement from hell. Can’t catch a God damn break this year.”

Stomping across the basement, leaving a single wet footprint on the hideous woven rug the old owners had left behind, he starts digging through the laundry basket RJ had brought down for an old towel. 

He didn’t notice it at first, the creeping sensation that crawled up his spine. The same feeling that he’d felt when he stuck his hand down the drain on Monday, the same feeling that he felt staring into the open closet Thursday night, the feeling that’d kept him up tossing and turning and sweating last night. His aggressive digging through the basket slowed to a stop. Bucky hadn’t been able to place the feeling before, but standing with his back to the basement he knew what it was with absolute certainty.

He was being watched.

Bucky spun around quickly, his limbs feeling heavy and awkward and cold. The basement was still empty except for him. From the other side of the room he watched as more grey sludge bubbled out from the outlet.

Shaking his head, Bucky tried to will his uncooperative feet to turn around so he could find a towel. Every cell in his body was telling him not to turn around. 

‘There’s nothing there,’ Bucky thought to himself. ‘I’m exhausted after a week of work and little sleep. The move’s been stressful. I’m still healing from the accident. There’s nothing there.”

Without looking away from the wall socket, he grabs the top piece of clothing from the basket, figuring it’s already dirty so what does it matter? Reluctantly he tears his eyes away from the outlet and starts briskly wiping the grey residue the puddle had left on his foot, every second not looking across the room increasing the feeling of doom in his chest. It’s so cold he can see his breath. Over the sound of his heavy breathing there’s a soft noise. A noise like dress shoes on concrete. There’s a shadow in the corner of his eye and he jerks upright, stumbling backwards and hitting the concrete wall behind him roughly.

“Dad? Are you okay?” RJ asks, brows knitted together in concern where he stands in front of him. “I couldn’t find any flashlights, I’m sorry.”

“I’m...it’s fine, RJ,” Bucky tries to catch his breath, heart pounding in his chest. It had just been RJ, there was nobody else in the room. He ignores the fact that RJ’s barefoot and the figure he’d seen had been much larger. He needs a good night of sleep. Maybe some motrin for the pounding in the back of his skull. “That’s fine. I found the problem anyway.”

RJ looks back to the washing machine and makes a disgusted noise similar to the one Bucky had made earlier.

“I didn’t know outlets could leak,” RJ wrinkles his nose in distaste. “How do you even fix that?”

“No clue. I guess I’ll have to call someone. An electrician?” Bucky wonders aloud as he hits the lights and starts to usher RJ back upstairs. The exhaustion’s sinking in hard and Bucky’s not going to feel better until he’s laying on the couch and the basement doors closed up with the heavy box of books shoved in front of it. “Maybe a plumber?”

“The basement creeps me out,” RJ admits sheepishly once they’re well out of there and Bucky’s toeing the books back into place.

“Me too,” Bucky chuckles, trying to stop thinking about the feeling he got down there. “But it’s just a basement. Nothing to be scared of besides maybe some gross wall slime.”

“Ugh, yeah. I can’t believe you stepped in it,” RJ fake gags and clutches his throat theatrically. “I’d go sterilize that if I were you.”

“Oh, what? You don’t like the slime?” Bucky feigns surprise, steadily creeping towards his son. “‘Cause that’s what’s for dinner tonight!” He lunges at RJ, only for the boy to duck out of his grasp at the last second. 

“You’ll never catch me alive!” RJ yells as he bolts through the foyer and the living room and slips out the backdoor. Bucky gives one last glance to the firmly shut basement door. The box keeping the door shut feels very much like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound, but at least he got RJ to stop worrying about it. Taking a deep breath, he plasters a smirk on his face and chases after his son.

“Who said anything about catching you alive?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK WOW! Sorry this is a week late, I severely underestimated how much school and work and babysitting would get in the way of me writing! Between being busy and the fact that this is two times longer than my usual chapters, I totally lost track of the time. I will be posting chapter 4 ASAP and try and post chapter 5 at the regular time. I hope. Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
